Burnaby's Michael J. Fox talks hockey and his new sitcom

Alex Strachan, Postmedia News07.29.2013

Ana Nogueira with Michael J. Fox in The Michael J. Fox Show. Fox plays a local news anchor in New York who puts his career on pause so he can focus on his health after he’s diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.NBC
/ Eric Liebowitz/NBC

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — “Visibly relaxed” is no longer in Michael J. Fox’s vocabulary, owing to continuing, persistent symptoms from his Parkinson’s disease. On this weekend afternoon, though, in a back room at Circa 55 Restaurant at the Beverly Hilton hotel, alone with a handful of visitors from his home country Canada, he was in an easy-going, talkative mood, his handshake solid and firm — no trembles there — and his eye-contact bright and unwavering.

The 52-year-old writer-actor, voice-over artist , husband, father and tireless advocate for medical stem cell research was looking trim, tanned and about as relaxed as an actor-producer with an untested new sitcom on the way can look. The Michael J. Fox Show, in which he plays an idealized, fictional semi-autobiographical version of himself, bows in late September, on NBC in the U.S. and Global TV in Canada.

Fox plays Mike Henry, a former New York local-news anchor and father of young children, who returns to work with his family’s blessing after several years’ absence, despite continuing to wrestle with symptoms from Parkinson’s disease.

On this day, several hours earlier, Fox faced a ballroom full of 200 reporters alongside his Michael J. Fox cast-mates Betsy Brandt and Wendell Pierce and writer-producers Will Gluck and Sam Laybourne. He fielded nearly an hour of questions about how much the sitcom is drawn from real life — “Does your wife want you out of the house?” he was asked at one point — and how he hopes to manage the rigours of a weekly sitcom while struggling with Parkinson’s. He answered questions with the good-natured confidence and joie de vivre that has characterized his public persona ever since he was first diagnosed with the degenerative disorder. As one journalist in the room tweeted at the time, “Everybody’s worried about Michael J. Fox’s health and endurance except Michael J. Fox.”

“It’s true,” Fox said, when this was pointed out to him. “When they first pitched the show, somebody said, ‘Are you nervous?’ And I said, ‘What, going to work for 22 minutes?’ I knew what I was in for, and I wanted to do it. I feel I can do it. . . . This is what I love to do, what I’ve enjoyed throughout my life. I just thought, ‘Why can’t I?’“

Fox is serious about his campaign for medical research. His Michael J. Fox Foundation, established in 2000 and focused on finding a cure for Parkinson’s, is the largest single private funding source of Parkinson’s research, having raised more than $325 million in little more than 10 years.

All that was far from his mind, though, when he opted to return to work in a weekly sitcom, the entertainment form in which he made his name as an actor, first as conservative teen Alex Keaton on Family Ties, from 1982-’89, and then as big-city deputy mayor Mike Flaherty on Spin City, from 1996-2000.

Since leaving Spin City in 2000 to concentrate on his personal battle against Parkinson’s, he made several high-profile, in some cases Emmy Award-winning guest appearances on programs like Boston Legal, The Good Wife, Rescue Me, co-produced and starring his close friend Denis Leary, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, with Larry David.

Guest appearances aren’t the same as a regular, starring role, though, and Fox felt the time was right to commit to a weekly series once again.

The Michael J. Fox Show is not preachy or sanctimonious. Parkinson’s plays a part, but it’s not really what the Show is about. It’s designed as a gentle, kind-hearted family comedy, more The Cosby Show than a updated-to-modern-times remake of Spin City or Scrubs. As Fox’s character Mike Henry says in the series’ pilot: “I don’t want a pity job.”

Alone in a room with a handful of fellow Canadians, Fox would much rather talk about hockey, family ties, hockey, the importance of children and teens finishing their education, and hockey.

“We just did an episode for the show about hockey,” Fox said. “I skated out with Denis Leary about a week ago. We just skated out, tried a couple of scenes, and it went great. I talk hockey all the time; sorry about that. In this episode I’m trying to get my son interested in hockey. He’s stuck into video games and I’m trying to get him to be more active. I bring him out to the rink, and then I start playing and forget all about him.”

Fox, born in Edmonton, raised in Burnaby, B.C. and now living in New York, is a lifelong Vancouver Canucks fan who also follows the New York Rangers. In a strange twist of fate, the Canucks and Rangers have a peculiarly adversarial and yet oddly connected history. The two teams met for the Stanley Cup final in a memorable seven-game series; Fox recalls being torn over which team to back at the time. He was happy for both, but more happy for the Rangers in the end — not because they won but because that was where he was living at the time.

This past summer, the Rangers fired their coach John Tortorella; the Canucks fired coach Alain Vigneault. In yet another twist of intertwined fate, the Rangers have since hired Vigneault to be their coach and the Canucks have hired Tortorella.

Fox laughed, while scratching his head.

“They swapped coaches. That’s hilarious.”

He thought for a moment.

“I don’t know how that’s going to work out,” he said, after a pause. “It’s going to be interesting to see. I just don’t think it’ll work with the Swedes (Henrik and Daniel Sedin).”

In yet another hockey-related twist, NBC — the NHL’s official broadcaster in the U.S. — sent a box of 16 hockey-themed designer cupcakes to celebrity hockey fans at the start of this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs.

Each cupcake bore the team logo of a playoff-bound team. Fox put them in the freezer, then took them out one at a time.

“Each time a team lost,” he said, “I literally stuck a fork in it.”

He stuck forks in the Rangers and Canucks cupcakes earlier than he would have liked. The Chicago Blackhawks was the last surviving cupcake, and the only one not to be driven through with a fork.

In 1994, during the Stanley Cup final, Fox admitted he had dropped out of high school to pursue acting and was newly determined to finish school as an adult and get his General Education Diploma, so that his own son, who was five at the time, couldn’t hold that over him if he ever decided to leave school himself when he was older.

Reminded of that, Fox was suddenly philosophical.

“I did get my GED,” he said quietly.

His son is now 24. He and his wife, Tracy Pollan, have twin daughters, age 18, and a younger daughter, who’s 11.

“He went to college,” Fox said. “My two twins are going to college this year, and my little one I’m sure will go to college. I didn’t finish high school, it’s true. So it’s nice. It’s nice to see them grow.”

Earlier in his career, Fox flirted with the idea of stepping behind the camera and being a director. He made an acclaimed short film, in which brawling hockey players and seemingly mild-mannered musicians in a symphony orchestra trade places. Fox enjoyed the challenge, but he also realized it was not something he could do over an extended period of time.

“I started directing about 20 years ago. I did a couple of films, and I found it was like being nibbled to death by ducks. There are just so many things you have to do. The acting issue, the writing issue — I just thought, I love what I do. Be in the business you’re in.”

Fox watched several episodes of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom while preparing for the role of local TV-news anchor Mike Henry. Fox worked with Sorkin in a past life, on Sorkin’s 1995 film The American President with Michael Douglas and Annette Bening. Fox played presidential assistant-for-domestic-policy Lewis Rothschild to Douglas’ president Andrew Shepherd.

“We were actually born in the same year on the same day,” Fox said, of Sorkin.

Seriously?

“Seriously. June 9, ’61.”

The Michael J. Fox Show has given him a new lease on life.

“I had a muscle that had atrophied and that I didn’t have anymore,” he said. “I realized it would get progressively worse and I’d be in a bad situation. Or it would get strong as I used it more, and it would get easier. And that’s what’s happened. I feel great. I wake up more fresh every day, and ready to go.”

The Michael J. Fox Show will premiere in September, on NBC and Global TV.

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